Short Poems

Those Colosseum fights eschew,
Avoid the fierce attack:
Else, going there with eyes of blue,
You'll come away with black.

If dulness makes a Poem long,
Rubeta, then are you
Long as the Mississippi River,
And quite as dirty, too.

My breath is on the mountain pine,
My murmur on the sea;
The burden haunts that heart of thine,—
Love and eternity.

At noon I watched
In the large hollow of eternal heaven
A soaring hawk climb slowly toward the sun
Through gyres of adoration without end.
His flight was a great prayer. . . .

In a smooth train thy mystick figures flow,
And swiftest gales of eastern winds out-go.
Thy pen our words paints with the nicest care,
Before the fleeting voice dissolves in air:
Flying it draws the image of the mind,
Nor one idea wandring leaves behind.
Faithful as echo thy rare art is found,
Preserves the sense as it returns the sound.

My famous country values gold far less
Than conquest brave of such as gold possess.
To be o'ercome with wealth I do not use,
And to o'ercome with poison I refuse.
No hand loves more than mine to give to many;
No heart hates more than mine to take of any.
With so firm steel virtue my mind hath armed
That not by gold nor iron can it be harmed.

Now quenched each midnight window is. Now unimpeded
Darkness descends on roof and tree and slope;
And in my heart the houses that you have not needed
Put out their lights of comfort and of hope.

He who fears to risk his life,
Or who grudges money spent,
Never will be Chief or Monarch,
Nor will conquered lands be his.
Either the Throne or the Bier;
Such the resting-place of Kings;
He who has not a warrior's heart
Armies bring him no success.

He whom the trees accept,
He to whom the great clouds bow in passing,
He to whom the bluebirds bring the back-door gossip of heaven—
He cannot be agnostic.
Soon or late, he must say, “I love”:
Who loves, knows.

The perfume is the same, the same the hue
As that which erst my senses did delight:
But he who planted the fair avenue
Is here no more, alas! to please my sight!